Like empty shells...

It often only occurs to me after a drawing is finished where the idea might have come from. I've probably said it before many times but it's subconscious, I find it very difficult to come up with something when I think "I'd like to include x/y/z in a drawing," but let my mind roam around and things appear. This, I now see, has some science fiction elements (no shit, it's a shell the size of a tower block!); Ray Bradbury's earpiece shells from Farenheit 451, Arthur C Clarke's imposing monoliths...none of this is intentional but it creeps in and curls up by my feet and I hear it breathing softly in the background, or is that just the snoring pug? 

I promised myself I would finish this before the year was out and for once I set a goal and stuck to it, long may that continue. It was a polishing up of an old idea and I can lay it to rest now, though I don't think it'll truly be the end; I like the uncanny feeling of unnatural scale. I'm looking forward to the stillness of January and the chance to rifle through my notes and scribbles for the next old/new thing. 

Happy New Year. 

Either it is, or it isn't...

Inspired by one of the most unusual things I've ever been presented with as a gift. In real life, both these beauties were sadly deceased, so this is the backstory. I'm not going to provide too much narrative; grief speaks for itself. A friend who saw this drawing today described moths as tiny humans with cloaks on creeping about at night. So if creepy, night-dwelling, dead stuff is your bag, this ones on me. Happy Halloween. 

What's deceased and what's alive...

Everything you see here has come straight from my mind. The inaccuracies, the bad perspective, the anguish...yes, I claim them all! I think we've all felt like this; the thing we want more than anything, forever outside of our reach. I hope I've captured something of that feeling and also the physical sense of animate vs inanimate; here but not really; vital parts missing...I park my dark in these crosshatched shadows and laugh a lot in real life as a result. It keeps me on the straight and narrow (most of the time). Finding somewhere to keep your melancholy doesn't mean you have to hide it or hide from it. Throw it out there...it works. 

Hope you're happy too...

One from the archives...Since I'm drawing either very slowly or not at all at the moment I thought I'd share this little ballpoint drawing from a few years back. It was for a (now disbanded) local band that my brother drummed for called J.A.R.S (hence the jar) to promote an EP they made called (you guessed it) My Friend Hope. They were quite specific about what they wanted but luckily at the time I had a bit of a thing for drawing glass jars and bottles. I toyed with the idea of putting something in the jar, I can't remember now what sort of things passed through my thought clouds but in the end it seemed that the title suggested emptiness waiting to be filled so it was left as it was. The typography is a bit dodgy and the perspective isn't right but the lads were quite happy with it...it's all subjective isn't it? 

They're only echoes...

It feels like years since I started this (it's actually just a couple of weeks) and back then I had a reason for it, something definite had inspired the idea, it meant something. But it coincided with a bout of repetitive strain (I think, but it's in both hands so I'm not so sure) and then trapping my thumb in a collapsing washing maiden, which stopped all fine detail for a bit and made me forget the point.
So let me view it retrospectively and try and impart some meaning to the art...This is my hand, the one I draw with, so I suppose it's a kind of self portrait. I did post an earlier version on Instagram (@hollyholtart) with a description along those lines but I've refined it slightly since then and added some pencil (of all things), which I actually quite enjoyed as the delicacy of the drawing required something less...dense. This is one of those drawings that would have gone on forever so I just had to decide to stop. I'm even going to be so bold as to say I quite like this drawing. It's a description of the part of me that's close to nature, the part that likes to pick things up and explore them, the part that has to translate thoughts into pictures. The part that hides in a shell. Right, I've said too much, I'm outta here!

Hidden treasure...

Sometimes I just have to prove to myself that I still can. It felt good to do something observational, to think about negative space and form and light and shadow and really look at a thing rather than dreaming it up. To actually draw a thing that's there in front of me. So the victim of choice was these tiny bones and the weapon, biro. I've had the bones for ages, I found them and keep them in this little box like some kind of psycho killer. I'm not. I just love their bleached beauty and their reminder that everything is finite. We'll all be bones in a box one day I suppose. I wonder what people reading this think I'm like in real life...

Like a moth to a flame...

Or in this case, a light bulb. These are the moths that flutter around in my brain when I have an idea for a drawing. They flit aimlessly, bouncing off the walls of my skull. Some of them get fried up and die but every now and again one settles on something half decent. 

That wasn't the intention of this drawing, I just wanted to draw a bigger light bulb. The thought only occurred to me as it was nearly finished that it was quite a nice metaphor and that something subconscious was at play. I like light bulbs as an image, they're quite harsh and give a strong contrast between the darkness and the light. I did tell myself I wasn't going to do any more intense blackness with the biro for a while but all too soon I returned to it, like...well, you know the simile. 

Flying too close to the Moon...

A while back I drew the Minotaur, hesitating over the agonising decision of whether to make a break for freedom or stay a prisoner of the only home he'd ever known...a sort of mythological Stockholm syndrome. So here's another subversion of the original myth. I had the idea of drawing Icarus and I was going to keep it simple but then as my over active imagination assumed control, Icarus became a woman...then the Sun became the Moon (of course)...then obviously nothing but the infinite blackness of space would do for a backdrop. I could never be accused of cutting corners, that's at least (I stopped counting) six layers of crosshatched and scribbled black ballpoint, the fine kind not even medium! Why do I put myself through it? 

The Moon proved quite troublesome too but I ended up experimenting at the eleventh hour with pigment marker blender over the biro which turned out quite nicely, just smoothed some of the harshness. The image above is a black and white version, below is how the drawing actually looks in real life. The blender turned the biro a bit blue, which I do like but I think the whole drawing would need to be a bit blue too. Another experiment for another time...

You can either run from it or learn from it...

A little slice of history...Quite some time ago I used to draw a lot of pencil portraits, both of humans and animals. I hadn't really done much drawing for a long time and then some colleagues and I started to draw pictures of each other during slow afternoons at work and it turned out that mine were a pretty good likeness. Once people got wind of the fact I could draw, I started to get a fair few requests for them and very quickly became thoroughly miserable. I was enlarging photos, sketching, tracing the sketch onto nicer paper, checking and double checking every last detail...it was mentally draining. It had to stop.

So here's what I dislike about drawing portraits: Firstly, they take such a soul destroyingly long time. I used to spend hours painstakingly rendering every precise detail as best as I could until I wanted to cry. Secondly, I don't get peoples fascination or love for them, I'd rather die than have a drawing of myself up on the wall. Thirdly, when done like this, although it is a skill in itself, it only ever felt like copying, there's no room for error or scope for creative licence. And finally, I began to really dislike drawing in pencil. Everything about pencils started to annoy me, I didn't like sharpening them every five minutes, I didn't like how many different grades were needed just for one drawing and I could never get a dark enough shadow. 

So I started doodling about with a biro and the rest is history. There's many, many brilliant portrait artists and styles out there and I'm not discrediting their work (or their customers) in any way, it's just not for me. I don't regret doing them, they brought people happiness and quite often brought tears to their eyes which is a high accolade indeed and I might not have developed the style(s) I use today without them. I'm not exactly an overnight success and could probably have carried on and made a business out of them but it just felt wrong. It lacked creative integrity. But I wanted to share the story, thanks folks, I feel cleansed of the past now. 

The keepers of our secrets...

Another little skull that kept pecking away at my own until I finally got round to drawing it. I love doing these strange little skeleton drawings every now and again. They aren't exactly what you'd call anatomically accurate but their tiny bones seem to exude personality more than flesh and feathers do. The intention was for the Blackbird to be contemplating his skeletal reflection but to me, the skeleton seems more taken aback by what it's seeing. Once I start these things, they really do take on a life of their own and the picture in my head is never quite the picture you see here, but think of that as an enhancement. I did have more ambitious plans for the design of the mirror but I really don't have the patience, I think you can have too much agonising detail in your life and smaller than life size bones in ballpoint pen is plenty for me, thanks. 

Out there in the deep...

A blue shark, in blue biro. That worked out quite nicely didn't it? I was asked to draw a shark and here he is. I don't really think he looks ferocious but I'm sure he's a swift and agile predator. 

I've recently decided that I don't draw in blue pen enough, it suits certain subjects perfectly and makes them glow with electricity (which is just what I look for in creatures of the deep). This is quite a simple sketch really but there's something about the bleak, stark page with the shark hovering there. Brings to mind The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall. I like backgrounds, setting a scene, creating shadows...but sometimes, there doesn't need to be a narrative. And am I really going to argue with this guy? 

You're the bees knees but so am I...

This grew out of a little thought I had about bees that might make ink instead of honey. I managed to locate some honeycomb grid paper and although it's cheating a bit, I really liked the idea of leaving some of the grid undrawn to show off how the paper has created the hexagons of the inkycomb. It's darker than I intended really but the bee not leaping out off the paper at you straight away is quite nice I think...and I won't be spoiling it with colour this time. To be honest, I much prefer THIS little bee.

This is how it feels to be small...

This idea (or something like it) has been rattling around the inside of my skull like a beetle in a bottle for some time now. I like the idea of drawing collections; hundreds of the-same-but-different items like you'd find in a museum. In practice I probably don't have the attention span for it, although I do really love to draw insects over and over again. Natures sparkling gems that I'd like to train to stay still on the lapel of my jacket when I go out like a pet/jewellery combo...I digress, back to the drawing: as I said, the idea was a museum collection and I was going to house them in a case with labels but when it came down to it, I couldn't bear them to be locked up or worse...So mine are alive and free but they can't read so hopefully they've put themselves into the right order (the artist cannot be held responsible for discrepancies in the name tags). They're also happy to sit while you look at them, just don't stay too long they're ready for a tea break.

Just for fun I thought I'd colour them with acrylic ink, I'll leave this open to interpretation but I know what I think...

Under a blue moon...

Last night was a blue moon, which despite a day of pretty grim weather, I managed to catch a glimpse of later in the evening. One thought led to another and before I know it, I'm making pictures of the moon again. This is a response to the previous drawing in a way, almost a dialogue with myself about day and night which is echoed in the technique. Here, I was removing lines rather than adding them, drawing out the image with masking fluid then peeling it away once the ink was added. Just a little experiment, but I like the immediacy of this style. Apart from waiting for the mask and ink to dry, producing this had a nice energy about it and some mesmerising patterns swirling in the ink and water. 

To me this feels like you're lying on the ground looking up through the branches, completely unintentional but that's the great thing about experimentation: the discovery of something unexpected. 

Masking fluid on application...spooky...

...and after it dried...

And check out the name of the ink! I'd never noticed that before...

The sun that pins the branches to the sky...

Don't be fooled by the simplicity of this, it felt like it was never going to end. I seem to have developed a ridiculously time consuming (and wholly unnecessary) technique of cross-hatching in biro to create large areas of blackness, then finding it not quite black enough and going over it with a brush pen. I know what you're thinking, why not just go straight in with the brush pen? No. It just doesn't feel black enough. And anyway, it's all about process, not product. I like the painstaking method, it's immersive. 

This is an almost literal interpretation of a scene I saw back in February or maybe March when I turned out of my street and the Sun was red and huge, burning behind the leafless trees like they were about to catch on fire. It could actually be a blood moon too depending on how you want to view it but I thought it was time our local star got a tribute (in orange and magenta acrylic ink), one last image of winter as the planet tilts into spring.

The dream again nobody understands...

This was intended as a sketch to plan out an idea, but I probably won't bother drawing it properly now, it kind of got on my nerves once I got started. I do quite like the neon exit sign though - I really thought I was on to something when I came up with that...

It was inspired by a recurring dream I started having about a year ago, although this image isn't so true to dream life..In the dream I'm in a building where every room looks identical and I can't find my way out. I come to a space where a Minotaur (of sorts) is standing behind a counter or service hatch and I tell him I can't find my way. He says nothing but points to a door and when I open it I'm outside. Then I wake up. My Minotaur isn't really like the one in the dream, whom I suspect may just be a bloke in a mask. The life of a skint artist, even my dreams are low budget. 

I saw it written and I saw it say...

Two strange things just happened: The first: I'd forgotten how to use my scanner! And the second: I felt nervous about posting again. This is just a little sketch to help me get back into things (again...), although it started life as part of a larger drawing that I lost interest in part way through. But, as is often the case, I kind of still liked my little cosmonaut chilling against a Moon rock. It seemed a shame to just ditch her so I decided to post her as she is, unfinished lunar surface and all. Her pressure suit is coloured with orange ballpoint and I also like how it looks faded and dusty, like she's been waiting here for a long time...Apologies for the scrappiness, I'll try harder next time, which will be soon (I promise). 

Wash out the sand but never the sound...

In a further attempt to get back into drawing again, I started dotting this. Did it work? It's too early to say. I like the idea but I'm not sure on the style. It wasn't going to be dots and it wasn't going to be sepia but as I've said before, this stuff draws me just as much as I draw it and the dots and colour kind of emulates the grainy texture of sand and sea shells. I'm convinced that things like that creep in on a subconscious level because I only realised this when the drawing was half finished. I should probably keep that to myself and let folk think I know what I'm doing...

I did, however, intend this to be a sequel to the whale ribs in a way; another lonely seascape with an ambiguous natural form. I'm trying to create a juxtaposition between the feeling of awe at the delicate beauty of nature and the sense of unease at such a thing becoming imposing, menacing even (and that is a very pretentious sentence but I can't describe it in working class, "grim up north" terms, sorry.) Or is it just a normal shell and the child who ran off and left her bucket behind really, really tiny? 

It comes back but it's never the same...

I've been having a really extreme bout of drawing block lately. I've got pictures in my head but I can't seem to send them down my arm and into a pen, the link appears to have been severed. There's a few different ways I usually respond to this depending on the level of meltdown. On this occasion, after starting and abandoning a couple of other things, I thought it best to just scribble it out, play with some textures and see what happened. So here we are...again.

As well as bones, extremes of light and dark have become a bit of a fascination of mine and trying to create illumination from a light source in ballpoint pen presents a nice way to scratch about in the shadows. I can't explain why my lightning bolts shine in different ways to each other and I can't explain why the sea is not as choppy as the weather suggests but it's nice to be back. 

Because it's you that sets the test...

Some people certainly know how to set a challenge. A request which has evolved into this hybrid creature sprouting tree antlers and cradling the pale moon (which has proved to be a bit too pale and delicate to survive the scanning process, grrr). I've been told that February's full moon is known as a snow moon because it brings cold weather with it and lights up the snow. That thought must have crept in and germinated while this drawing was in progress, although it doesn't take much for me to crowbar the moon into a drawing (or conversation for that matter).

This drawing was meant to capture the essence of a challenge or demand for respect but I feel like I'm being given an almost accusatory stare by that dead but alive eye...I love how even though I make this stuff, it never truly feels like it's come from me...

The places you don't go...

This morning I came across some little black cards with nice crinkly edges. I don't know what they were originally for but they're for this now. In theory, I love drawing in white on black paper...in reality, it's a bit of a mare. Theory does not agree with experiment. Unforgiving is the word I'd choose for it. The main problem is that the pen people haven't really come up with a white pen yet that suits my purpose, to be honest I'm still awaiting the invention of the white biro. But it was a nice mental interlude from something else I'm working on at the moment that's taking a really long time. 

These dandelions are quite tiny, the cards are slightly bigger than a business card. I was going to add a third drawing of the seeds floating away but they weren't turning out so well. So I've left it at two because it was a doodle just to use the cards for something rather than throw them in the recycling box...Note to self: don't sweat the small stuff. 

Just gotta know if I'm wastin' my time...

This wasn't what I had planned today. This isn't even the skull I'm meant to be drawing at the moment. Ignore what they say about procrastination...white ink is the real thief of time. There I was wrapping a parcel when this little light bulb flashed on, a skull in white ink on that brown, scrappy paper. And then all other items on the agenda ceased to be. (Just to clarify, I didn't draw this on the parcel, that would be some freaky ebaying!)

I started off with just a skull shape brushed on in diluted ink, which looked quite ethereal and ghostly and sort of worked in it's own way. I suppose you want to see it now? Here you go:

Then I remembered a sepia coloured pen I never really got on with and thought "where are you, my old nemesis?" (Yes I do talk to inanimate objects, what of it?) Pen found and many dots later I had a little skull. I'm not sure on the perspective but I wanted to use the natural way the ink had settled as the cracks and fissures in the bone, maybe some shadow underneath would have helped to anchor it down...I quite like how the paper has wrinkled though. It gives it energy, it was done quickly and it's nice that that shows. It's not perfect and neither am I. 

PS, if you're a pen weirdo, here's the pens I used:

Love without your heartbeat...

This is horribly unoriginal but after poring over the beautiful illustrations by Henry Vandyke Carter in Gray's Anatomy, I got the feeling that I wanted to draw a heart. Once I'd had a look at a few, (pictures that is, I've not branched out into amateur surgery) I tried to draw as much as I could from memory and imagination without checking the details, which is partly why my aorta is very similar to the way I'd draw twigs. I thought about inking it up but I couldn't find the red bottle and magenta wasn't going to cut the mustard so I've left it mono. It works well enough, I think. Do you know, I can't find an actual illustration of a full heart in Gray's book? Disappointing.
Anyway, look after your heart; eat fibre, don't smoke and if you must give it away, be sure it will be gratefully received. Happy Valentines.

Your head will collapse if there's nothing in it...

Lately, when I don't know where to put myself, I've started to draw dead heads. I was getting to a point this week where my mind was going to explode if I didn't put pen to paper, so I channelled the energy into this cow skull. I like the contrast of my head being too full and this one being completely empty and yet it still feels like it's watching me, casting a critical eye. It brings to mind this story by Annie Proulx.

This is actually something that I never normally do...practice. A preliminary sketch for another skull drawing that I'm going to be starting soon (I hope). I just needed to make sure I could do it, an exercise in satisfying the curiosity. I'd usually just go for it and to hell with the consequences. I must be losing my edge...

I don't want to see what happens next...

I wasn't going to post this. It's sketchy, it's unrefined, it's vulnerable. This is how drawing feels. Like removing tiny but important parts of myself and flinging them into choppy waters. So it's more of a description in sketch form, explaining what happens on the inside in the only way I know how. It took a lot for me to start sharing this stuff, I used to leave the room when people looked at my drawings. Now I can't hold it all in! 

Under skin is where I hide...

Hmmm...how do I go about explaining this? Not the kind of thing I usually go in for is it? I was asked for the Eye of Providence done as some kind of creatures eye looking like it's peering out from under the skin - this is going to be adapted into a tattoo at some undefined point in the future. I suppose some people have art put under their skin and some people have the opposite happen.

This drawing started life as an octopus eye and then changed to a dragon (of sorts) after battling with tentacles and losing miserably. I don't think this animal would have talons like that though and they aren't really big enough to belong to it either so I'm going to assume that some other unfortunate thing has got itself trapped under there with it. So the all seeing eye is blue, has scales and captures unsuspecting smaller reptiles to keep under human skin. Someone better let the Masons know...

I want you to notice when I'm not around...

It feels like such a long time since I've been here. A week is a long time in politics...I kind of lost all creative ability for a few days which was an almost physically painful experience. I'm starting to pull myself back together with some more acrylic ink experimentation, like a reverse Rorschach test: the ink tells me what it wants to look like by virtue of random colour mixing. I don't tend to have favourites amongst things that aren't immediately finite but if I had a ray gun to my head and had to choose a colour I'd possibly go for the blue-grey of Nuthatch wings. It's uplifting and melancholic at the same time. I like it best when it fills the sky and tells you "this day could go either way." 

A slice of life...

Sometimes it's just too hard to maintain the level of intensity required for fine detail, sometimes the ink needs to run, sometimes the art needs to make itself and let me know when it's done. But even then I can't just let things be. 

This was an experiment in acrylic ink. Shall I explain how I did it? Sigh...oh, alright then. The paper was wet and the ink diluted and dotted on with a brush from the centre. It was quite mesmerising to watch such unexpectedly concentric circles forming and it was nice to get lost in the swirl, the bleeding of each layer into the next. Some additions with a very fine brush and a slightly more saturated ink solution created the odd darker line here and there. But what exactly was it? Newton's rings? Ripples on water? Magnetic field lines? I knew I'd have to work into it somewhere with the biro, I couldn't leave it alone so it became a sliced tree showing it's growth rings with ballpoint bark on the outside. I've tried not to overdo it and just keep the pen to the edges, the ink effect is very subtle in places but that's ok. Maybe you see something different...

Like scattered black and whites...

A tiding of magpies. This is from quite a while ago but since it's leaving me to find a new home, I thought I'd share it. 

Just a little doodle really from a time when illustrating sayings from folklore was in my head along with drawing flocks of birds. I liked the idea of showing each individual differently despite them being part of a larger group. A sort of metaphor for humans which I'd love to claim was deliberate but has, in fact, just dawned on me as I write this. 

I'm not overly keen on the text, it seemed like a good idea at the time but I think it takes away the effect of perspective. Like many of my "projects" it was subconsciously abandoned after a couple of drawings (actually, I can't bring to mind any others so it could be just this one). I'm scattered, I have a new idea forming before the one I'm working on even gets onto paper. "If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?" Thanks Einstein, it obviously happens to the best of us.

The tranquility of solitude...

Another weird little creature that wouldn't leave me alone. It was just a matter of where to put her..so she ended up in an egg. I drew this really as a way of starting a new sketchbook. Most people who draw or write get intimidated from time to time by the dreaded blank page, especially the first page of a new sketchbook. I'm not usually big on sketchbooks, I give up as soon as a drawing isn't "perfect" and it becomes another place to jot down recipes and shopping lists, but this one has the purest, smooth, white paper (that's kind of a holy grail for me) so I dived in with this doodle. 

I thought about giving her furniture, a cup of tea perhaps, maybe a picture on her shell wall but as with this drawing, I quite like the emptiness. A cross section, slicing into someone's tranquil hideaway. As for what she's reading...who knows? Perhaps she's revisiting one of her old sketchbooks.